Book excerpt: "China's staggering economic growth in the last 40 years is one of the most fascinating and important stories of social change in recent world history. Social scientists from around the globe have produced vast literatures to explore the story's countless dimensions. Invariably, the government's actions lie at the center of the narratives that emerge. The Chinese state nurtured the early growth of private entrepreneurship in township and village enterprises. It made dazzling investments in infrastructure projects and is responsible for a model of investment-led economic growth that dominates to the present day. It has tried, although with various degrees of success, to either build or revamp gigantic systems of public education and public health, of old-age, medical, and unemployment insurance, and of poverty assistance. China has, of course, also expanded its military power and foreign operations. To do all these and many other things, the Chinese government has had to accumulate and deploy vast amounts of social resources. Certainly, it has done so partly by exercising control over the nation's banking sector, manipulating its capital markets, and owning large quantities of productive assets through state-owned enterprises. Yet these forms of state ownership and state control are dwarfed by the government's most important access to social resources: the power of taxation"--